he avoidance of all public
homage by the Emperor, threw for several days a cast of gloom over the
whole city; which was soon dissipated by the reappearance of Napoleon,
and the publication of that celebrated report by M. Champagny in which
the glories of France--her victories, her acquisitions in wealth,
territory, and influence--were recited in terms whose adulation it would
be now difficult to digest.

From that moment the festivities of Paris commenced, and with a splendor
unsurpassed by any period of the Empire. It was the Augustan era of
Napoleon's life in all that concerned the fine arts; for literature,
unhappily, did not flourish at any time beneath his reign. Gerard and
Gros, David, Ingres, and Isabey committed to canvas the glories of the
German campaigns; and the capitulation of Ulm, the taking of Vienna,
the passage of the Danube, and the field of Austerlitz still live in the
genius of these great painters.

The Opera, too, under the direction of Gimerosa, had attained to an
unwonted excellence; while Spontini and Boieldieu, in their separate
walks, gave origin to the school so distinctly that of the Comic Opera.
Still, the voluptuous tastes of the day prevailed above all; and the
ballet, and the strange conceptions of Nicolo, a Maltese composer,--in
which music, dancing, romance, and scenery all figured,--were the
passion of the time.

Dancing was, indeed, the great art of the era. Vestris and Trenis were
the great names in every _salon_; and all the extravagant graces and
voluptuous groupings of the ballet were introduced into the amusements
of society: even the taste in dress was made subordinate to this
passion,--the light and floating materials, which mark the figure and
display symmetry, replacing the heavier and more costly robes of former
times. The reaction to the stern puritanism of the Republican age had
set in, and secretly was favored by Napoleon himself; who saw in all
this extravagance and abandonment to pleasure the basis of that new
social state on which he purposed to found his dynasty.

Never were the entertainments at the Tuileries more costly; never was
a greater magnificence displayed in all the ceremonial of state. The
marshals of the Empire were enjoined to maintain a style corresponding
to their exalted position; and the reports of the police were actually
studied respecting such persons as lived in what was deemed a manner
unbefitting their means of expense. Cambaceres and Fouch